Last updated: September 4, 2020

 

Cookie Statement

Types of cookies and similar technologies

Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of text that are sent as files to your computer or mobile device when you visit most websites. Cookies may be delivered by us (first-party cookies) or delivered by a third-party partner or supplier (third-party cookies). Cookies are either session cookies or persistent cookies. Session cookies enable sites to recognise and link the actions of a user during a browsing session and expire at the end of each session. Persistent cookies help us recognise you as an existing user and these cookies are stored on your system or device until they expire, although you can delete them before the expiry date.

Other similar technologies

  • Web beacons, GIFs and clear GIFs are tiny graphics, each with a unique identifier, that are embedded invisibly on sites and in emails. Web beacons allow us to know if a certain page was visited, or if ad banners on our sites and other sites are effective. We also use web beacons in our HTML-based emails to let us know whether our emails have been opened by recipients, which helps us to gauge the effectiveness of certain communications, promotions and marketing campaigns.
  • Proximity-based beacons send one-way signals over very short distances, to communicate with associated mobile apps installed on your phone. They can notify you about experiences related to your trip, for example, and can alert you to related deals or promotions. Beacons only communicate with your device when you are in close proximity, and only if you have given consent within the relevant mobile application.
  • Pixels are small objects embedded into a web page that are not visible to the user. We use pixels to deliver cookies to your computer, facilitate the log-in process, monitor the activity on our sites and deliver online advertising.
  • Tags are small pieces of HTML code that tell your browser to request certain content generated by an ad server. We use tags to show you relevant advertising and promotions.
  • Scripts are pieces of JavaScript code that launch automatically when certain web pages load, to determine whether or not users view associated advertisements.
  • Local storage objects, such as HTML 5, are used to store content and preferences. Third parties with whom we partner to provide certain features on our site to display advertising based upon your web browsing activity use local storage objects to collect and store information.

All the technologies described above will be collectively referred to in this Cookie Statement as 'cookies'.

Expedia Group’s use of cookies

At Expedia Group, we use cookies for a number of reasons, including to:

  • Help us to improve your experience when visiting our sites
  • Fulfil transactions and ensure that our sites perform as intended
  • Remember your preferences, such as language, region or currency
  • Provide you with relevant advertising and analyse performance of the ads
  • Enable you to return to previous travel searches
  • Identify errors on our sites
  • Help with data protection and potentially detect and investigate malicious or fraudulent activity
  • Help us to understand traffic to our site, including time and date of the visit, time and date of the last visit and other information
  • Analyse how well our sites are performing

Types of information collected by cookies

The types of information that we collect through cookies include:

  • IP address
  • Device ID
  • Viewed pages
  • Browser type
  • Browsing information
  • Operating system
  • Internet service provider
  • Whether you have responded to, or interacted with, an advertisement
  • Referring or referred links or URLs
  • Features used and activities engaged in on our sites and in our apps

See the 'Categories of personal information that we collect' section in our Privacy Statement for more information on what types of information are collected automatically.

Types and functions of cookies

Essential cookies

Certain cookies are required or 'essential' for our sites to function as intended. Essential cookies are necessary for you to navigate our site and use certain features, such as logging in to your account and managing your bookings. These cookies are also used to remember security settings that allow access to particular content. Lastly, we use essential cookies to collect information on which web pages visitors go to most, so we can improve our online services. You are not able to opt out of essential cookies.

Other types of cookies

We also use other types of cookies to make our site engaging and useful to you:

  • Functional cookies. We want to make sure that when you visit our site, your preferences (such as your preferred language), settings and previous searches are remembered. Functional cookies enhance your experience on any Expedia Group company’s site.
  • Analytics cookies. We use analytics cookies to:
    • Understand our site’s performance and how it is used, including the number of visitors, how long you stay on the site and which parts of the site you visit. We can see details about how visitors interacted with the site, such as the number of clicks that visitors made on a given page, their mouse movements and scrolling activity, the search words that visitors used and the text that visitors enter into various fields
    • Test different designs and features for our site
    • Monitor how our visitors reach our sites
    • Determine effectiveness of our advertising
    • Improve our services, including your experience on our site

For analytics, our third-party service providers may use cookies to perform their services and may combine the information that they collect about you on our sites with other information that they have collected. For example, we use Google Analytics cookies to monitor the performance of our sites. Our ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visit to our sites is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy. This Cookie Statement does not cover such third parties’ use of your information.

Some analytics cookies can perform tasks that are essential and/or functional to online services, such as enabling site improvements and testing changes on a site.

  • Advertising cookies. Expedia Group and our third-party advertising partners may use advertising cookies to show you advertisements, both on and off our sites, that are based on your interests. We may allow third parties to collect information about your online activities through cookies to perform their services, and may combine the information that they collect about you on our sites with other information that they have collected. These third parties include business partners who collect information when you view or interact with one of (1) their advertisements on our sites or (2) our advertising or booking information on their sites and advertising networks, which collect information about your interests when you view or interact with one of the advertisements or tracking mechanisms that they place on many different sites on the Internet. Our partners may make assumptions about your interests, characteristics or preferences, and add you to groups based on those assumptions in order to show you tailored advertisements. Expedia Group does not have access to the cookies that these third parties may use to collect information about your interests, and the information practices of these third parties are not covered by this Cookie Statement or our Privacy Statement. Some of these companies are members of the Network Advertising Initiative, which offers a single location to opt out of ad targeting from member companies. To learn more, please click here and here.

Your information choices

You can choose not to receive tailored online advertising on this site and other sites and learn more about opting out of having your information used for tailored advertising purposes by accessing one of the following resources:

  • For EEA, Switzerland and the UK: http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/
  • For Canada: http://youradchoices.ca/choices/
  • For the US and the rest of the world:
    • http://www.aboutads.info/choices/
    • http://optout.networkadvertising.org/

Note that if you choose not to receive tailored ads, you will still see online advertisements, but they will be general and less relevant to you.

How can you manage your cookies?

You can set or amend your web browser controls to accept or refuse cookies whenever you like, but please remember that if you do choose to reject cookies, your access to some of the functionality and areas of our site may be restricted.

By opting in to the use of cookies and other similar technologies on our site, you allow us to:

  • Show you relevant content and ads that we think you’ll want to see
  • Collect information so that we can improve your experience on our site
  • Share information about your use of our site with third-party advertising and analytics partners
  • Enable you to earn and redeem loyalty or rewards points
  • Show you bundled savings or discounts

Do Not Track signals and similar mechanisms

Some web browsers may transmit Do Not Track signals to sites with which the browser communicates. Because of differences in how web browsers incorporate and activate this feature, it is not always clear whether users intend for these signals to be transmitted, or whether users are even aware of them. Participants in the leading organisation for setting Internet standards that is addressing this issue are in the process of determining what, if anything, sites should do when they receive such signals. We currently do not take action in response to these signals. If and when a final standard is established and accepted, we will reassess our sites’ responses to these signals and make appropriate updates to this Cookie Statement.

Contact us

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, please contact us via the Privacy section on our Customer service portal here or alternatively, you can email our customer service team at support@chat.expedia.ie. For a list of the Expedia Group companies, click here.

Updates to Cookie Statement

We may update this Cookie Statement in response to changing laws or technical or business developments. You can see when this Cookie Statement was last updated by checking the 'last updated' date displayed at the top of this Statement.